WMR has learned from inside sources in Washington that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has actually been sidelined in her position as secretary of state by Barack Obama’s mega-powerful chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

Taking Mrs. Clinton’s place in the Senate is Kirsten Gillibrand, a pro-business and centrist Democrat more to Emanuel’s liking than Caroline Kennedy. A dirty tricks campaign against the daughter of America’s 35th President helped to derail her candidacy and it is suspected by Beltway insiders that Emanuel held the “sins” of the father and grandfather of Kennedy against her. Those sins included President John Kennedy’s opposition to Israel having nuclear weapons and Joseph Kennedy’s dalliances with Hitler’s Germany while U.S. ambassador to London. Although he is ill from a malignant brain tumor, Senator Edward Kennedy is fighting mad over the political trashing of his niece and is aware that Emanuel may be behind it.

WMR has also been told by reliable sources that Mrs. Clinton was largely responsible for the demotion of Emanuel in the Clinton White House in 1993. Mrs. Clinton wanted Emanuel fired but White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty instead, demoted Emanuel from presidential policy adviser to the office of the White House Press Secretary. Emanuel would never forget Mrs. Clinton’s role in his demotion.

WMR has been told by a knowledgeable Clinton White House staffer that it was Mrs. Clinton who weighed in against Emanuel, mostly for his sabotaging of Clinton foreign policy initiatives with regard to the Middle East, as well as his legendary foul language and huge ego.

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On November 10, 2008, WMR reported: “What ultimately led to Emanuel’s dismissal in 1998 from the Clinton White House was FBI intelligence that linked him to sabotaging Clinton administration initiatives to hammer out diplomatic deals between Morocco and the Western Sahara independence front POLISARIO, as well as diplomatic initiatives to ease tensions between Washington and the Palestinian Authority and Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Emanuel appears to have gotten the better of Mrs. Clinton. After having vanquished long-time enemies like Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, and two Democratic leaders he tangled with in the Congress as an Illinois congressman — Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi — Emanuel has relegated Mrs. Clinton’s role as secretary of state to one similar to that of Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, William Rogers, who was forced to defer to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on major foreign policy initiatives.

Emanuel has boxed in Mrs. Clinton with a team of major White House foreign policy “czar-like” envoys who report directly to Obama and Emanuel. These envoys include George Mitchell for the Middle East, Dennis Ross for Iran, and Richard Holbrooke for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Vice President Joe Biden has been given the task of rebuilding U.S. ties to NATO. In fact, representing the United States at the 45th Munich Security Conference this weekend will be Biden, National Security Adviser James Jones, U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus, and Holbrooke. Mrs. Clinton will be noticeably absent.

Instead, it is being reported that Mrs. Clinton’s first overseas trip will include Japan, where she will discuss Japan’s hunting of whales, which, while important to the environmental concerns, does not reach the importance of the issues that will be discussed in Munich where Iran’s parliamentary speaker and former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be present.

Emanuel may have other reasons to dislike Mrs. Clinton. Clinton’s 2000 Senate race in New York stirred many pro-Israel supporters who resented her involvement in peace negotiations with the Palestinians and her public embrace, as First Lady, of Suha Arafat, the wife of the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman. And, according to State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton, author Jerry Oppenheimer claims that a former campaign aide to Mrs. Clinton received a verbal blast of “You fucking Jew bastard” from Mrs. Clinton. Oppenheimer suggests that Mrs. Clinton’s mother, Dorothy Rodham, harbored anti-Semitic feelings because her mother had re-married a Chicago Jewish businessman named Max Rosenberg and that these sentiments transferred to the current secretary of state, who now finds herself in a high visibility job without much responsibility.

Emanuel is building up a potential phalanx of powerful enemies in politics. They not only include Dean, Richardson, the Kennedy family, Mrs. Clinton, Pelosi, and, now, Daschle, but also a number of pro-labor Democrats who are suspect of Emanuel’s ties to big business and Wall Street. If the long knives start to come out in Washington, if Obama continues to stumble on administration nominations and policy issues, Emanuel will be the number one target.